Bristol Palin, Mary Cheney and the Limits of Family Privacy

The John McCain campaign says this is a just a private family matter. Sen. Barack Obama says candidates' families, especially children, are off limits. But when family matters relate directly to policy matters, they are fair for discussion.

Obviously, I am referring to the media coverage surrounding Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the presumptive Republican vice presidential candidate, and her pregnant, 17-year-old daughter, Bristol. Gov. Palin's family is asking for privacy, yet the policies of Palin's party do not protect the rights of American women to making their own private decisions about unintended pregnancies.

The situation raises legitimate questions about Gov. Palin's positions on sexuality education, teenage pregnancy and reproductive choice. Americans have every right, and American media the responsibility, to explore those questions without exploiting the child involved. After all, Gov. Palin had no hesitancy sharing the details of her son Track's entering the army, or her personal decisions about her infant, as examples of her commitments to family. How could she expect that her daughter's decisions wouldn't be put into play?

According to MSNBC, Gov. Palin has said that keeping the baby was her daughter's own decision. Really? In 2006, Gov. Palin said that she would not support abortion even in the case of her own daughter becoming pregnant from rape. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that there wasn't much discussion about all of Bristol's legal options when she told her parents about her pregnancy.

I'm also wondering how much talk there was about sexual limit-setting beyond "just say no" and contraception in the Palin household. Gov. Palin opposes comprehensive sexuality education, and supports abstinence-only-until-marriage education. If abstinence-only-until-marriage doesn't work in your own home, how can you expect it to work for the country's teenagers?

The research, as I've written in my books for parents, is quite clear. In homes where parents talk openly about sexuality, including their values about premarital sex, contraception and STD prevention, their children are more likely to delay sexual activity and to protect themselves if they do have sex. Comprehensive sexuality education programs have a far better record of helping young people abstain and protect themselves than abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Perhaps Gov. Palin will now reconsider reconsider her (and Sen. McCain's) positions on teenage pregnancy prevention.

"Family privacy" only goes so far. The Clintons were famously protective of their daughter Chelsea's privacy during their years in the White House, and admirably so. Yet it was a legitimate issue for public discussion in 1993 when the Clintons, after campaigning for strong public schools, chose to send their daughter to a private school instead.

Then there was Mary Cheney in 2004. Cheney, no child, nevertheless sheltered behind her parents' indignation when John Kerry raised the question of how the Bush-Cheney ticket's opposition to lesbian and gay civil rights would affect the vice president's own daughter. Rather than address the question, Cheney and wife Lynne excoriated Kerry for violating their family's privacy. Lesbian and gay Americans never got a fair hearing after that. We must not let that happen this time.

My organization recently wrote to both campaigns, urging them to support comprehensive, age-appropriate sexuality education; access to affordable sexual health and reproductive services, including abortion and adoption services; and full equality, including civil marriage, for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. The situation in Gov. Palin's family must not be allowed to shroud these issues. If anything, it makes addressing them even more urgent.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate

 

Comments

[wakeupeverybody]

"The John McCain campaign says this is a just a private family matter. "

I agree that it should be a private family matter, however once that family member becomes a part of the political scene, thrust into the lime light, while making futile attempts to cover up her pregnacy by carrying the baby in front of her, it becomes a public matter. Bristol should not be on the champaign trail, just as her elder brother is not on the trail.

McCain is obviously suffering from senility, he is forgetting how ten years ago,he told a cruel joke about Chelsea to a group of Republicans:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."
Chelsea was a teenage child at the time and the joke was hideous.

Bringing the child's father to the stage is even worse, his life now will be on display as well as hers. The only way for privacy from this point on is to become a member of the Alaska secession movement and form their own country.

[qwr]

Totally agree with you, Rev. I'm not religious, but if I were, I would be a Unitarian.

[madnana]

I am a strong Obama supporter but I feel for the Palin family. My daughter had a baby at fifteen and had all of the appropriate education about what caused pregnancy, how to prevent it, and my openness to communicate with her should she become pregnant. To my dismay, none of that prevented her pregnancy. I asked her what she wanted to do and that I would support her whatever her choice. She was well aware of my strong pro-choice position and that I would assist her in obtaining a safe, early abortion. She wanted the baby (although, she wasn't very good at taking care of the baby and he became my responsibility. I have never regretted her choice nor has she.) Other families or teenagers might make different choices. Which is, I suppose, the heart of all this. Her daughter should have had a choice, which I suspect was, in her case, not meaningful. But having observed this, we need to leave it alone. As Obama said, all families have problems. We need to be careful not to make a difficult time more painful for both Palin's daughter and the baby she is carrying.

[ESerafina42]

Madnana -
It sounds like you did a great job. Girls are going to get pregnant whether they have sex education and contraception or not, but the ones who don't are a LOT more likely to, and they're the ones whose parents WON'T give them a real choice. Your daughter had one. I would imagine that you also wouldn't have thrust your daughter into the national spotlight for the sake your own ambition while she was pregnant. Women (and men) don't need to sacrifice their lives for their children, but it seems to me that there ARE times when they should put their families first, and this is one of them. It's not as if the republic will fall if she's not there to hold it up, but her family may.

[wmnorton]

Right on point! It is the policies that the Repuglicans espouse that need to be addressed.